


Contained

by florahart



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky is not okay, Clint is Not Okay, Goats, M/M, Suicidal Ideation, bucky's state of mind is not well, everything turns out okay, mostly Endgame-compliant, no actual suicide attempts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-09 21:15:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19484182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/florahart
Summary: Bucky isn't handling life well, after the return of the stones.  Then, neither is Clint.





	Contained

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lorien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorien/gifts).



> This fic was inspired by [this art](https://i.imgur.com/GUV7RkF.jpg) for the 2019 Captain American RBB, which I will ultimately edit into place in this fic.
> 
> There are notes at the end to talk about tags, because they may be spoilery and so I want to give you options. Read them if you need to know about how suicide comes up and/or Bucky's state of mind. 
> 
> If you think I really need other tags, feel free to say so.

"So Cap lived his whole life in five minutes?"

Bucky isn't particularly startled, although he doesn't know why Clint's behind him. Or rather, why Clint is _here_ full stop; as far as he understands, the guy went full manpain when his family all dusted.

Which is hardly a kind way for him to think about it; he wasn't around to deal with all that loss.

Exactly.

He's not that ready to explain about the ghost memories of Steve, and the not-memory that is an image of Steve sinking in murky arctic water (furthest thing from dust, on the one hand, but similar in the flattening of color, the fade of features into nothing, the notion of reaching to grasp and just missing) that are tangled up in the pieces and patches of his fifties and sixties brain, but he privately suspects they guive him a frame of reference. 

Anyway, went full manpain, and according to the resources Bucky’s seen, all of everything he did for five entire years was about missing the shit out of them and trying to somehow improve the bad shit in the world enough to deal with that, so why he's not with them, or rather, given that Bucky knows he went home, why he's not _still_ with them ten weeks down the road, reveling in the backness of them and the wholeness of himself, that's a mystery. 

It's a mystery that's probably none of his business, though, and Clint will share if he wants to? At least, this is how he understands the social dynamic as explained to him by a number of people throughout America, Wakanda, and for a little while Central Europe, and given how entirely fucked about 94% of everything about him that isn't about Steve is, he tends to believe them? So all he says is, "Yeah, but… Fair choice, I guess. I lived what kind of was my whole life in a span he experienced as five minutes." He half-turns, squinting into the setting sun, and offers a little shrug.

"Not on purpose, though."

"No." Bucky doesn't look round again, but Clint doesn't move, and so finally he says, "No, not on purpose."

As if that's a pre-arranged end-of-conversation signal, Clint nods and moves away slipping back out into the trees that surround the property. It’s been a scorching hot day and warm evening and it’s still muggy, but the midsummer canopy is full and green, and he vanishes into the cool dark quickly. 

Bucky stays put on the bench, a bench he mostly thinks of as his because it’s always open and he usually sits, and turns over the notion of fairness, of parallelism, in his mind as he goes the other way to his rooms. Squints at it and lifts it up to look underneath. Thing is, it does feel like it's true in a backwards way, and even though Bucky is probably always going to be mad at Steve for leaving him, he also... well, he left first, right? Sure, eighty-something (ish? The math on this is weird) years ago, but it's true. 

He decides to think about it as fair and see if it helps with the complicated ball of angry desperate sorrow in his gut that is, well, not worse than the rest of his adult life so far, but also not noteworthily better.

Probably it won't, but it's worth a shot. 

Jesus, he’s a mess. Right now, he lives because the only sort of bright-line crystalline truth he knows is that the choice was made, on purpose, to bring back everyone. But he wishes he remembers being dusted. He wishes the five years had been experienced as peace, rather than simple nothingness.

He strips off his shirt and runs his fingers along the seam where his flesh melts into metal. It’s a ritual, and probably it’s a symptom; he has to do it, first his flesh hand checking, probing, for the line of where he is real and where he is not (that part he knows is a psych problem, his perception of himself as divided into real and unreal segments, but he hasn’t worked out a better way to understand it that isn’t worse), and then the left, metal, false, unreal hand bending up to check the same line.

So far they always tell him the line is in the same place, but still he has to check. It’s like how some people have to count the steps to the door or turn (and unturn and return) the lock three times before they can sleep.

Actually, considering when he needs to do it is before going to sleep, it’s probably a _lot_ like that last one. He completes this weird limited self-diagnostic every night, then kicks off his pants and wraps himself up in a blanket here in D wing of the compound. D for danger, not that anyone is saying that out loud; the other wings house a dozen people apiece and this one is just him and Wanda, the two who have lost their stabilizing influences _and_ the purpose brought on by a good fight. It’s probably not a coincidence.

(It’s definitely not a coincidence, but Pepper will never say so out loud or agree to his assertion. She lived with containing Stark for a really long time, though, and she knows a few things about making danger safe for coexistence.)

He thinks about that, and about fairness, and stares at the dark until it’s not really dark any more and the birds who don’t care about danger and just like the low population start to sing outside. Then, he sleeps.

He wakes with the awareness there’s someone in his room, and he tenses his whole body, essentially levering up to standing without warning, but he sits back down immediately. It’s Clint, sitting on the sill of his raised window staring out at the birds. One foot is also on the sill, wedged into the corner of the frame, and his back is pressed against the opposite side; his arms are crossed, hunched. His hair is still shaved up the sides, a tail growing longer in the back, and the tattoos on his forearms are almost iridescent in the yellow morning light.

It’s still none of his business why Clint is here and not in ...Iowa, a part of his mind he doesn't really had a lot of conscious interaction with supplies, although he’s becoming curious enough he thinks he might break the social contract and ask. He puts up his flesh hand to his own hair, also now shaved at the sides although he hadn’t really thought about Clint when he did it. It was mostly to keep the sweaty off his neck. But given last night, and the way Clint looks now, maybe this is part of their shared uniform of despair or something.

Fair, despair, share… Sure, why not. He runs his fingers along the seam of flesh and metal, and then finally says, “I thought about going back to Wakanda, but Shuri has problems of her own now. But I do miss the goats.”

Clint huffs a chuckle. “God, goats.” He pauses and then adds, “But I guess...”

Bucky waits, but Clint doesn’t add anything else. Finally, he decides if Clint isn’t picking up the conversation, he will. It’s his room and he can set the conversational rules. “Yes, goats. Stinky, evil, plotting little fuckers but at least you know where you stand.”

“Exactly.” Clint brings up his other knee and turns toward partway the room. “No surprises.”

“Well, no. I was surprised by them lots of times because I kept underestimating the plotting." And yep, curiosity is winning out. "Why are you here?”

Clint hunches a little further. “I guess maybe. Same reason you are?”

“Because you’re a centenarian murderbot who had two long-standing relationships of much importance, and one of those people decided to live without you and the other apparently jumped off a cliff to save the world?” He’s forgotten that Natasha, who wasn’t his friend, exactly, but with whom he had history, was, actually, _Clint’s_ friend, but he remembers as the words come out of his mouth. Shit. 

Clint visibly buckles, curling into his own belly and shaking his head as sweat breaks out on his pale forehead. “I tried, man. I did.”

“What?”

“To jump off the cliff. I was ready, and I had at least as much of a motherfucker of a ledger to clear as she did.”

“…Oh. I didn’t. No one… yeah, okay, that makes sense, now that I think about it. There’s the trash can if you need to puke. But anyway, that’s not explaining why you’re here.” 

“Can’t go home,” Clint said. “Pretty sure that's what all the poets say, right? I mean, I did. I went home. My kids are great. My wife is great. Me, not so much.”

Bucky nods. “Because you had to survive, and then you had a cause, and then …you didn’t.”

“Not really. Like, _yes_ , that's in there, but no, it's not the big. I don't know. Because of who I turned into while they were gone.”

“Which is the same thing.”

“It’s not.”

Bucky knows it really is, knows a shit ton about surviving and goals and the whole nine, but he presses his lips together and lets it go, looking away from where Clint’s still sitting awkwardly on his second-floor sill. “Well anyway. I’m the centenarian murderbot in the aforementioned. Whoever you turned into doesn’t scare me.”

That’s a true statement, as far as it goes, but Bucky knows his fright perceptions are deeply fucked up, so it might not be particularly comforting. But then, he’s not sure he’s ready to be a person who offers comfort anyway. When he looks that way again, Clint’s gone, evidently having made a silent escape out the window.

Bucky's more than a little impressed; his awareness of his surroundings and his hearing are both enhanced and generally considered kind of terrifying, and he didn't observe the departure. Nice work, Barton.

He considers whether to go back to sleep; even for him the couple of hours he got is pretty minimalist. But instead, he gets up and goes to shower.

It’s not until he’s standing under the water letting it run hot on his face because there is seriously no such thing as too much being warm that he puts together, really, the topic of Clint, the cliff, and Natasha’s death. Well. Fuck. Now he’s a murderbot and an asshole.

D for danger and also for dickhead. Great.

He dries off roughly and lets his hair drip down his back when he goes out to walk. He’s not going anywhere, not really. But walking is at least somewhat better than sulking.

Also, when no one sees him then eventually someone calls Steve, little old man Steve with his watery eyes and his tan cardigan, and then Steve calls him to make sure he’s all right and offers to come up for the afternoon, and those calls are terrible. He both aches to see Steve and can’t stand it when he does, and also he then hates himself for resenting Steve having a life, which doesn't tend to lead to an upward spiral of joy and love ...and so walking it is. He does a couple of laps around the entire property, stopping occasionally to watch the kids who are _not_ in D wing run through various drills and training he can’t imagine ever participating in again.

When he gets back, Clint is waiting in his living room. He starts talking the instant Bucky opens the door. “I’m a fucking mess and a danger to my kids.”

Bucky nods. “I’m a fucking danger to everyone, which has been proven repeatedly and sure, we broke the trigger sequence and all but... I'm still a fucking danger to everyone. I haven't ever counted, but at a guess there are thirty distinct ways I could murder you in this room? So um, I guess now you understand Hulk better than before?”

Clint snorts. “He can’t die, though. I can.”

“You going to?” Bucky feels his pulse climb—and what the hell; snipers don’t engage in physical stress responses, right?—but he works to keep his voice level. “Also, if you’re having ideas about suicide by Soldier, I don’t want that and I'm ...mostly? in control of the bad parts these days, so.”

Okay, that’s …weird because he didn’t know he had an opinion about that, had never _thought_ about that, until he was saying the words, but they’re true. He’s a realist about what it means to have what the kids now call PTSD—not a new phenomenon, although no one knows what he’s talking about when he says shell shock—and on a purely pragmatic and totally emotionless level he, the him that was and is the Winter Soldier, gets why sometimes people need to go and also need help to do it. Still, apparently he, the him that is James Buchanan Barnes, recovered zombie and erstwhile childhood protector of an American icon, is enormously opposed to offering that help.

Also, he's not _mostly_ in control. Not about that. He's sure, like really sure, thanks to Shuri and her goat therapy and her beads that he's not positive aren't sentient, that he won't actually kill anyone his real self doesn't want to, and when it comes down to it, Clint is his kind of asshole. He doesn't want to kill him, or see him kick off any other way, either. Not without a way better reason than a crisis of conscience because Bucky has the market on that shit cornered. Ugh.

“Do I have any better choices? Are things ever going to be normal again?”

What the hell, he’s legitimately asking Bucky, a man who spent decades as a brainwashed feelings-free assassin and who is currently trying to work out how feelings even work while concurrently dealing with grief and loss and fuck if he knows what else, what good choices exist in the world. Bucky scrambles for an answer but all he has is, “I don’t know. I don’t think you don’t. I don’t know how to answer this question. Please ask someone who is competent with humans. There are lots of things that will probably be better with time, like someone is eventually going to fucking figure out how to solve all the legal issues related to blipped-and-returned tenants and people can stop fighting about it? But I don’t think that’s what you’re looking for.”

There’s no response for a long time, and then Clint says, very quietly, “Thanks for not automatically telling me everything will look brighter at some pre-ordained future time.”

So, okay, magically he got something about feelings right. Cool. Mostly he's only ever been successful at that when the equation included Steve. But probably the statement requires an answer. He takes a breath. “What, ‘it gets better’ isn’t a message you’re good with right now?”

“So very not.”

"Well, there's always the line about how it would hurt your kids."

"Except they don't know me."

" _They_ think they do."

"Yeah, but I'm not that guy."

“What’s your wife say?”

“I can’t ask her about this.”

“Where’s she think you are?”

“Why do you think she doesn’t know?”

“Pal, if you can’t ask her what you have to live for, I don’t really think you can tell her you’re going to go ask someone like me that question.” Bucky tilts his head to study Clint for a minute. “But she didn’t kick you out, though, did she?”

“She did, actually. Sort of? Like. I went home a couple of months ago. More than. And I had nightmares, which, that’s hardly new because I’ve killed a lot of people and sometimes even if they fully and completely deserved it, still, watching someone bleed out… well. _You_ know, right?”

Bucky _does_ know, both halves of him, so he gives a curt nod.

“Right, so. That went on for a while, but then I started struggling with attention, like all the time. Kids’d tell me what they did today and five minutes later I’d have no idea. Or, I’d start wondering: what if only two of them had blipped, or only one, who would I be, and then an hour later I’d find myself sitting on my ass in the front yard with tears running down my face. So yeah, after a while she pressed a little. Fair, I guess; she wants to protect her kids as bad as I did. Do. As bad as I _do_. I put her off.”

“Bet that went great.”

“It did not. But I’m a stubborn son of a bitch.”

“And your wife?”

“Stubborner, which is probably just as well. So yeah, I talked. She listened to the whole thing, didn’t judge me for a second for all the horrible things I did, and then told me that when I was ready I would be welcome home. I said what if I’m ready now, and because she knows everything she just gave me this _look_ and told me… so, she never tells me not to be stupid, even when she’d be right, because she has opinions about the usage of the word? But she told me not to be an asshole, and she meant don’t be stupid, where stupid was thinking I was ready to be there. But she didn’t, actually, technically, tell me I wasn’t welcome.”

Bucky considers that for a second, then says, "I think that might be worse. Do you think that's worse?"

"I kind of do."

"Because it makes you responsible for choosing to whether and when to stay or go, and for coming back. And." Bucky stops short. "Or I guess maybe not? I'm not much of an expert in how marriages work. Or, like I said, humans."

"Think you're better than me, right this minute. I stuck it out two more days, but then I found myself all wound up and grabbing my gear over the kids arguing about a damn game, and that was enough of that."

"Then you are seriously and kind of astonishingly fucked, I guess." Bucky frowns. "Um. But still not that this means there's nothing in the world to live for. Look. I don't think I'll do well if you walk away from my sage advice and hurt yourself, so like, don't, okay?"

Clint gives a dry whuff of a chuckle. "I mean I guess that's a reason." He purses his lips. "But the actual reason I'm here is that actually, you're better than me, right this minute."

"You said that already." Bucky ducks into the bathroom and grabs a couple of hair ties, finger-combing the crisis the wind (and possibly his tendency to interrupt his own walking with impromptu gymnastics involving stumps and branches and the like) has made of his hair and making a tail, then a knot. "For what it's worth, you look like shit so I believe you, but it's still not that compelling."

"You're kind of an asshole."

"Yep."

"So, there's not a polite way to ask this."

"Well shit, then I guess you better stay quiet. That's obviously working out great for you."

That actually gets a hint of a grin on Clint's too-thin face. "I see how you and Cap were life-long--"

"--for a couple of years here and there, you mean? Also, if this is a question about whether we were together--"

"It’s not. I mean, the scuttlebutt is you were, but my point is, you're a lot like him."

"Uh-huh." Bucky tilts his head a little to get across his disbelief. "He's golden sunshine and everything that is America. I'm the literal, physical embodiment of the Soviet threat."

"And yet."

"Whatever. What does that have to do with whatever you're not politely asking?"

Clint sobers immediately. "Damn it." He's still for several seconds, then says, "I got over being brainwashed and killing people remorselessly once, but that was once. Limited scope, limited duration, and the pretty great excuse that a god made me."

"Yeah, I didn't have any gods in my head. Only monsters."

Clint stares at him for a minute. "But this time, I made my choices, and so I'm asking: what happens when someone wipes out memories like that?"

Bucky raises his eyebrows. "So, bad shit." He pauses. "Really bad shit."

"I was afraid that was the answer."

“I still have to check if I know who I am, like, all the time. I wake up and actually it’s a miracle I didn’t break your neck before I rebooted this morning.”

“I would have ducked.”

“Doubt it.” Bucky raises an eyebrow, then squints. “I’ve seen you work. You’re good, but I’m as fast as Stevie and also if you’d just jumped out of the window I’d have landed on you before you made it fifteen feet, so… yeah, doubt it.”

“So what you’re saying is, wear an ID lanyard if I sneak in again?”

“Or, you know, don’t sneak up on me when I’m sleeping?”

“Whatever.”

Bucky doesn’t answer that, just sits down opposite Clint. "But _I_ have a question for you." Clint doesn't answer him, so Bucky goes on. "Did you actually go after anyone who wouldn't have been a SHIELD target, or maybe a CIA one, if everything had still been standing?"

"Not the point."

"Totally the point; you didn't start murdering babies and skinning puppies. Also, this time there was also nearly a god who set everything off, so I think you can let yourself off the hook a little."

"Do you?"

"No, but no one has ever, and I mean ever, argued that I was an emotionally healthy person."

"Makes two of us."

Bucky nods. "Well. Now that we've settled that we're both irredeemable and never the less loved by worthwhile people, what should be our first order of business? I assume we're starting a club." He doesn't actually know why he says that; he is not a person who joins, or would ever consider generating, a club. The last thing he joined was the US Army, and that was both unavoidable because of Nazis and also a total shitshow in the end.

Clint shakes his head. "You know what Steve did while we were all waiting to die for five fucking years?"

"Led support groups?" Bucky thinks that's what someone said, although it's not that surprising that discussing The Blip, which is for some reason why everyone like him has started calling the period in which half the people they knew up and aged five years, has been low on the priority list of most.

"Well, yes, that was a thing. But he basically kept going on missions, tried to hew to the shreds of the organization. Nat gave him orders, and he went where she said."

"I'm sorry, by the way. About Natasha. About the whole, what I said," he waves his flesh hand in a circle. "...thing."

"Me too. Like I said. I had the ledger, and I had the shot, and then she fucking tricked me and let go."

Bucky nods. "If you want to tell the story – you know, heroic play by play or whatever – I don't mind listening. But anyway, what's your point? Stevie went on missions, because as I previously mentioned: golden sunshine of America."

“But not, actually. He was a mess. Stark was a mess. Everyone was a fucking mess. And what did everyone do? Steve went on missions. Stark retired, married Pepper, and had a kid. Nat held SHIELD together. Bruce came to terms with his inner beast. Thor fell apart by quietly getting drunk and staying that way. And me? I started murdering people.”

Bucky shakes his head. “You know what’s funny?”

“I’m not seeing the relationship between murder and humor.”

“When they put up images, on newsreels or whatever we call them in a year that starts with 2, of the Avengers? In stories about reversing The Blip? I’m usually on them. You are, too.”

“That’s because people don’t know. Hell, half of them actually don’t know, because they weren’t here. And it’s not like this is in the dataset Nat released, you know, back before. With the fucking HYDRA thing.”

“I do know about the data release, yes.” Bucky gives Clint a _look_ of his own. 

Clint rolls his eyes at himself. “Duh. Anyway. They don’t know who I am or they wouldn’t be putting me on there anyway.”

“Jesus, I thought you were making progress, a minute ago, but okay are you kidding me?” Bucky stands back up because the movement of pacing is good for moving the brain and the words. At least, it’s probably better for it than punching everything until nothing is standing. “They _do_ know who _I_ was, and I’m on the damn things too. But what I was saying was, we, you and I, are both perceived as Avengers who may have been working on the problem, regardless of our opinions.”

“Which means what, exactly?”

“Which means… Lang said I should ‘fake it until I make it,’ which I guess means I should pretend I’m okay and see what happens.” He gestures around himself. “I mean, obviously they know I’m _not_ okay, but they’re just exercising healthy caution and still trying to include me on stuff. They’d probably include you too, if they knew you were here.”

“Who says they don’t?”

“Did you check in at the front desk?”

Clint lets out a _pssht_ and shakes his head. “Desk, huh? No, but it’s a spy agency. Safe assumption, don’t you think?”

“But no one’s come to disarm you?”

“Who says I’m armed?”

“Uh-huh. Who says I’m _not_ , but they still took away all the things that aren’t literally stuck to my body.” Bucky lifts up the metal hand and taps its index finger where it joins at the shoulder.

Clint shrugs. “Whatever.”

“Words to live by.” Bucky goes into the kitchenette—there are communal meals, but so far he’s only shown up to a couple of them, and that was because when it was time for them to occur, he was with someone who insisted. Since he worked out the schedule, that’s been easy enough to avoid. “I’m eating. You eating?”

When he looks back out into the main room, Clint’s gone again.

He guesses Clint’s not eating.

Clint hasn’t returned by the time dinner rolls around, nor by bedtime, so Bucky strips off his shirt and jeans and burrows under the blankets. He checks his shoulder and closes his eyes, and for once, he falls asleep quickly.

When he wakes, it’s fully dark and it takes him a long moment to work out why he’s so very warm, curled back into Clint Barton’s body behind him. 

That. That shouldn’t be possible. He’s never asleep so deeply he wouldn’t feel someone climb into bed with him. Even when it was Steve, hell even when Steve was a shrimpy little guy who couldn’t reach the top shelf at the corner store, that never happened. He checks his shoulder again, and sits bolt upright. His arm is gone. He has a stump again, a ragged edge that feels moist and hot, the center of the joint exposed and dead.

He wakes up again, sitting up from the nightmare, and he’s alone. He turns on a light in the living room and sits for a little while, then pulls on his jeans and boots and goes outside. He has no intention of joining the communal meals (yet. Maybe someday, but not now), but he has the feeling if he stays in his quarters alone the rest of the night he might be catatonic, or explosively murderous, by morning. He does a fast lap around the compound, wings A through E with a loop around the lake and a trip through the obstacle course they make everyone master before they move on. He stops for a few minutes to catch his breath as he makes his way along the back, and then looks at the building’s face.

It’s a relief to see Wanda’s light on as well, and he runs up the stairs, three flights and down the hall, to knock on her door.

She opens up immediately, but Clint is behind her, bare-chested and rumpled, eyes sunken and swollen at the same time.

Bucky has a moment of confusion, because why is Clint _here_ , and he stammers, “Are you, am I interr… I can come back.”

Wanda rolls her eyes. “I see, you know, that you are ridiculous, but it is not necessary to offer the demonstrations.” She steps back and waves him in, then moves into the kitchen. 

Bucky stands there in her doorway looking at Clint, who shrugs. “I guess maybe it's time for a midnight snack? And no, since she didn’t dignify the question. There’s something to be said for fucking away the pain, but for one thing she’s kind of a kid, and for another thing that’s …not the relationship we have.”

“What is?”

“What is what?” Clint looks over his shoulder toward the kitchen.

“Your relationship to her?”

“I. Mentorship? I don’t know, actually. I thought I was older and wiser, but she blipped and I didn’t, and it seems like she’s my mother now. I have no idea.”

“She’s as big a mess as we are.”

"Maybe, but she seems to be handling things. She's lost a lot before."

"Haven't we all, pal. Al we can do is just keep pushing forward."

Clint hmms as they walk into the kitchen, and then they sit at the small table, while Wanda heats up milk at the stove. After a moment, she glances toward them. "When we were small, our mother sometimes made us chocolate for bad dreams. Mine isn't as good as hers, but perhaps it will do."

And then she sets mugs down in front of them and goes back to bed.

Bucky doesn’t discuss his nightmare, regardless of Wanda's assumption, and says nothing about the fact that Clint basically just holds the hot cup in his hands, barely lifting it to his mouth a couple of times before yawning and returning to the couch.

It’s not long after that before he returns home, taking with him the dregs of the cocoa and the long wine-colored scarf he loaned Wanda on a blustery day that must be four or five weeks ago now; it’s hanging next to the door and he realizes with a frown that that’s probably because he hasn’t seen her since, for her to return it.

It’s nice around his neck as he crosses the courtyard despite the summer weather, and when he checks his shoulder and puts himself back to bed, he leaves it on.

In the morning, it’s gone. 

He looks under the bed and between the blankets, then looks again. Perhaps he left it in the living room? Maybe he hung it up? He doesn't think he did. He goes back to look behind the headboard. In the nightstand. On the hangers in the closet. Towel rack in the bathroom. Shoeboxes under the coffee table. It's nowhere. What the hell?

It's not until he looks in the kitchen, where there is no mug on the counter or in the sink or on the table, that he really starts to freak out, and he jumps sky-high when Clint says, "So, you think I'm in the clear?"

He's stepping out of the bathroom as he asks, and he was definitely, _definitely_ not in there when Bucky examined the towel rack; the shower curtain had been open and there's nowhere to hide. The single window is up high and not of a size a man can get through, and the only other space adjacent is the closet, where he also wasn't.

Bucky stares.

"You look like you're seeing a ghost."

"I... think I am." Bucky opens his front door and runs downstairs, then across to Wanda's side and up.

Her door is standing ajar, the apartment vacant and soulless, and Bucky stands there for what he estimates is two minutes, maybe 2:03—and his estimates are good; this is part of what his brain just _does_.

"What's up, man?" Clint steps out of the adjacent apartment, wiping his hands on a kitchen towel and beckoning. "Thought I heard something. You want to come in for a bite? Just coming out of the oven." He goes back in, leaving the door cracked open.

Bucky takes the ten steps back to look in, and finds this apartment vacant as well. Creamy white walls, clean chrome and warm wooden accents, tasteful. Just like his.

He turns around without another look and goes back to his own apartment, and sits down on the couch, trying to ignore the quiver in his legs. His shoulder feels wrong, like he pulled something deep inside, and his hair is hanging off-center, tickling at his lip.

And then the phone rings.

The caller ID says it's Steve, and he struggles for a few seconds with whether to pick up, but in the end, he can't not talk to his Stevie, whenever he gets the chance, so in the end, he does.

When he answers, Steve says nothing. Or, whoever is calling says nothing; he can't actually prove it's Steve.

When he sets the phone down, there are a dozen wine-colored scarves drapes over the couch, over the back and one arm, puddled in not-circles on the cushions, one on the floor underfoot.

He picks up the phone and calls Pepper. He can't think of another choice.

No one answers, and he does the only thing that makes sense. He drops to the floor, feeling consciousness fail as he goes. He reaches for his shoulder and lands hard on one hip.

It hurts.

"Buck? You in there?"

Steve sounds hale and whole, if worried, and Bucky frowns before he even opens his eyes. In three months he's heard Steve maybe eighteen or twenty times, and he had sounded like an old man every time, his voice a little quavery, a little thin. This isn't that. This is the Steve from Germany, from DC, from Sokovia... This is his Steve, not that any Steve isn't his Steve.

He opens his eyes. "What happened? Wait. Is Clint... How's Clint?"

Steve tilts his head in confusion, and although the bags under his eyes suggest exhaustion and strain his hair is blond and full, his hands firm on Bucky's good arm. He looks amazing.

"Clint is ...fine? He called the other night, but I don't think he's leaving Iowa again any time soon. Why?"

"He was here?"

Steve shakes his head. "Not since we put the stones back."

Bucky tries to sit up and realizes the wrongness in his shoulder is that the mechanism is fucked up. It weighs him down and doesn't respond to commands. He says, "But he was talking. He was asking. He said he doesn't know how to go on from who he became. He said you went on missions and he turned into a murderer. He asked how to be safe with his kids after making that call."

"I talked to him from here, Buck. Couple times recently. I don't leave here until you do—I mean, I was only gone two minutes, Buck, and when I got back... you were down."

"What about Wanda?"

"She's at the compound in New York. Rhodey and—and this surprised me—Okoye are getting the new team together. Oh, but she did send a package." Steve reaches to one side and produces a bubble-wrap envelope. "You can probably smell the chocolate from there." He holds up a soft-looking scarf in reds and purples, and a package of what looks like some kind of homemade fudge.

"Why aren't you old?"

Steve squints at him. "You do remember the serum, right?"

"But." Bucky squints back and finally notices he's not in a bed. He's in a capsule, his head elevated maybe fifteen degrees. His feet are cold. His hair feels chilly on his neck. His flesh hand is resting on his bare belly and when he moves it the fingers are stiff and awkward. His stomach feels hollow and hungry. "What year is it?"

"Still 2024."

"How long?"

"Has it been 2024?"

"Have I been on ice."

Steve nods. "Three weeks, give or take. Shuri was going to just keep you under and contained until she'd fixed the whole problem. It's a bunch of science that Tony might have understood, but basically the Snap did ...something to everyone's neurology that won't be a problem for the general population for a long time but you aren't the general population. It would have messed up me too. And Nat, if, well."

"Contained." Bucky thinks about that for a long time, then frowns again. "And you didn't marry Peg? Instead of coming back?"

"I'm pretty sure Peg moved on a long time before I got out of the drink, Buck. Also, you and me, we don't leave any more, right? End of every line?"

"So." Bucky doesn't know what to do with that. "So it was a dream?"

"I didn't think you dream when you're under?"

"Always a first time."

"But it was bad? Oh, babe. I'm sorry. We should have woken you."

"It was... But then Clint was there, and Wanda. I guess maybe I heard you? _Is_ he messed up about anger issues? You know what, never mind. It's not my business, is it."

"He calls here every couple of days, says he needs to put it on someone who understands, which isn't his wife and no counselor in Iowa has clearance to hear most of what he'd need to talk about. Not my area, but then, it isn't anyone's."

"Can I get up?"

"Probably can't walk. Neurological issues, I told you. But yeah." Steve stands and does something to the capsule controls, then scoops Bucky up out of it and walks with him to the window. Two goats look placidly back at them, chewing on something that might have been plastic until one kicks the other one in the head and runs off. 

"Oh, Steve," Bucky says, laughing.

"Yeah?"

"No. That goat. Is Steve. The one he kicked is Tony."

"You named... Maybe I should put you back to bed."

Bucky shrugs, an awkward move with one shoulder frozen and the other stiff. "You coming with me?"

"Only if you rename that goat."

Bucky closes his eyes and lets Steve carry him. "Maybe I'll just call him Punk."

He feels Steve chuckle, the vibration in his chest and the hum of it, and thinks maybe things turned out fair for him, for once, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> There are two things. One is actually plot spoiler and the other is not, so the one that's not: suicidal ideation. It becomes clear that Clint isn't sure he deserves to live given his actions post-Snap/pre-Endgame. It is mentioned that suicide by cop (by Winter Soldier) is a concept, but at no point is there any actual move toward suicidal activity.
> 
> the spoilery one, after some space, is Bucky's state of mind:
> 
> .
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> And maybe Clint said nothing of the sort because it becomes clear Bucky is not in fact in contact with Clint at the time; he is having a lengthy nightmare.


End file.
